EPTThe health effects of a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize (from 11% in the diet), cultivated with or without Roundup, and Roundup alone (from 0.1 ppb in water), were studied 2 years in rats. In females, all treated groups died 2–3 times more than controls, and more rapidly. This difference was visible in 3 male groups fed GMOs. All results were hormone and sex dependent, and the pathological profiles were comparable. Females developed large mammary tumors almost always more often than and before controls, the pituitary was the second most disabled organ; the sex hormonal balance was modified by GMO and Roundup treatments.
Taken from the original paper (PDF).
This study has made a lot of noise lately, both because of the unusual way it appeared (journalists who had seen it had to sign a non-disclosure agreement that prevented them from writing anything before the "official" day of release) and the extreme conclusions it contained. The aim of Seralini's team was to prove that GMOs are toxic on their own, without the impact of the infamous Roundup pesticid. Here is how it goes : 200 rats are divided in main 4 groups, wich are in turn divided in 2 (male and female).
- The first is the control group (no NK603, no Roundup)
- The second is only fed NK603 maize
- The third is fed NK603 maize and Roundup
- The fourth is only fed Roundup
The NK 603 maize is homegrown, to ensure that it is not already contaminated with Roundup. Note that of these 200 rats, only 40 are used in the final conclusion (the raw data hasn't been yet published as far as I know).
A controversy sprung over the quality of the paper, as many voices suggested it provided unsufficient data analyzed through a questionable methodology. Is the study really that dubvious?
- The albino rat used fo the experiment, called "Sprague Dawley is allegedly extremely prone to cancers. Nearly 80% are struck with cancer after two years of life. They are also very sensitive to stress and changes in their diet.
-->These concerns are indubitably legitimate. However, it is not limited to this study : Sprague Dawley rats are among the most commonly used animals in lab testing! Not only that, they are the race used in the validation process of the NK603 maize(PDF).
- GMOs are already tested and no problem has been found yet.
-->The studies are limited to 90 days, which represents less than 10% of the tested rats' life span.
- The number of tested rats (200) is too low to draw any sort of conclusions
-->True, and yet it is much more than the number usually seen. - The CRIIGEN and DR. Seralini are openly anti-GMO.
-->They are indeed. Both their data and the data provided by Monsanto is to observed precaciously.
Here is an article that sums the situation pretty well :
NK603 is a type of corn, or maize, that has been engineered to make it resistant to Roundup and is used by farmers to maximise yields.
The authors of the study said it was the first experiment in GM food that followed rats throughout their lifespan, as opposed to just 90 days.
Premature death and tumours were far higher among rats, especially females, that had been fed the GM corn or given ordinary corn supplemented by water to which low concentrations of Roundup had been added, they said.
At the 14-month stage of experiment, no animals in the control groups showed any signs of cancer, but among females in the "treated" groups, tumours affected between 10 and 30 percent of the rodents, the study said.
"By the beginning of the 24th month, 50-80 percent of female animals had developed tumours in all treated groups, with up to three tumours per animal, whereas only 30 percent of controls were affected," it said.
Males which fell sick suffered liver damage, developed kidney and skin tumours and digestive problems.
But other scientists said the study was too underpowered, had questionable gaps in the data and raised doubts more about Roundup than the NK603 corn itself.
It entailed 200 rats divided into 10 experimental groups, of which only 20 were "controls" fed ordinary corn and plain water.
This sample size is too small to rule out statistical quirks, especially as the rats were of the "Sprague-Dawley" laboratory strain, which is notoriously susceptible to mammary tumours, said Maurice Moloney, research director at Britain's Rothamsted agricultural research station.
The authors of the study said it was the first experiment in GM food that followed rats throughout their lifespan, as opposed to just 90 days.
Premature death and tumours were far higher among rats, especially females, that had been fed the GM corn or given ordinary corn supplemented by water to which low concentrations of Roundup had been added, they said.
At the 14-month stage of experiment, no animals in the control groups showed any signs of cancer, but among females in the "treated" groups, tumours affected between 10 and 30 percent of the rodents, the study said.
"By the beginning of the 24th month, 50-80 percent of female animals had developed tumours in all treated groups, with up to three tumours per animal, whereas only 30 percent of controls were affected," it said.
Males which fell sick suffered liver damage, developed kidney and skin tumours and digestive problems.
But other scientists said the study was too underpowered, had questionable gaps in the data and raised doubts more about Roundup than the NK603 corn itself.
It entailed 200 rats divided into 10 experimental groups, of which only 20 were "controls" fed ordinary corn and plain water.
This sample size is too small to rule out statistical quirks, especially as the rats were of the "Sprague-Dawley" laboratory strain, which is notoriously susceptible to mammary tumours, said Maurice Moloney, research director at Britain's Rothamsted agricultural research station.
Source (AFP)
What can we conclude from this? Not much, it seems. The study provides insufficient data, although the innovative approach calls for more investigation : can GMOs really affect the human body on the long term? The reproduction of a long-term analysis would give us a good answer about the legitimacy of our fears in regards to genetically modified food. However, the results from one type of GMO don't tell much about GMOs as a whole.
The most interesting aspect revealed by this affair is the problematic state of scientific control and review over the biotech industry, a problem that we can probably extend to other fields (think pharmaceuticals). Validation tests are severely lacking, while most extensive studies come either from Monsanto themselves or direct opponents. Monsanto has also quite a history, as the maker of the Agent Orange and the center of many controversies (PCB pollution, Indian green revolution, etc).
More about Monsanto :
+ Show Spoiler +
"Marie-Monique Robin travelled the world to meet scientists and political figures in order to investigate Monsanto's actions, controversy over GM crops, and the effects of the globalization of industrial agriculture on farmers in the developing world. Those interviewed include Shiv Chopra, a Canadian researcher who was fired by Health Canada for revealing an attempted bribe by Monsanto regarding the attempted introduction of bovine growth hormone into Canada. The author of the research met several independent scientists around the world who tried to warn the political authorities about the use of genetically modified seeds. According to Robin, most of these scientists actually lost their jobs as a consequence of their speaking out. The "revolving door syndrome" is also pointed out in the research as a threat to the quality and independence of the scientific conclusions about the effects of Monsanto products, especially those reached by the Food and Drug Administration.
Robin travels to India, Mexico, Argentina, and Paraguay to see how Monsanto's genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have affected local farmers using it for their crops. The claim is that suicide rates of farmers in India have increased as farmers are finding it harder to earn a living using more expensive Monsanto seeds that, despite claims, still require specific pesticide and fertilizer (see above). Mexico, having banned GMOs, is trying to limit contamination and crossbreeding from subsidized U.S. GMO corn imported through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for eating. Argentinian farmers are giving up farming and moving to urban slums because they cannot compete with GM crops and are finding their farms, livestock, and children being negatively affected by pesticide runoff. Paraguay was forced to accept GMO crops as it was being imported anonymously and grown en masse, so prohibiting its export would have damaged the economy. In all cases genetic variation is reduced as a result of monocropping and ownership is increasingly concentrated."
Robin travels to India, Mexico, Argentina, and Paraguay to see how Monsanto's genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have affected local farmers using it for their crops. The claim is that suicide rates of farmers in India have increased as farmers are finding it harder to earn a living using more expensive Monsanto seeds that, despite claims, still require specific pesticide and fertilizer (see above). Mexico, having banned GMOs, is trying to limit contamination and crossbreeding from subsidized U.S. GMO corn imported through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for eating. Argentinian farmers are giving up farming and moving to urban slums because they cannot compete with GM crops and are finding their farms, livestock, and children being negatively affected by pesticide runoff. Paraguay was forced to accept GMO crops as it was being imported anonymously and grown en masse, so prohibiting its export would have damaged the economy. In all cases genetic variation is reduced as a result of monocropping and ownership is increasingly concentrated."
Closing words by Pr. Eisen, from the University of California, Berkeley :
It’s a really messed up field. The vast majority of research on GMO safety – on both sides – is done by people out to prove something rather than investigate something. This affects every aspect of the work, from study design, to execution, interpretation and publicity.
This particular study was so poorly designed – the highly sensitized line, the inexcusably small number of animals – that you didn’t even have to look at the ridiculous statements from the lead author (like “GMOs are a pesticide sponge”) to see that it was biased.
The result of all of this severely tainted work (and there’s plenty from the pro-GMO side too) is that the really good science in the field gets drowned out, and isn’t taken seriously because people just assume that it, too, must be biased. Total mess.
This particular study was so poorly designed – the highly sensitized line, the inexcusably small number of animals – that you didn’t even have to look at the ridiculous statements from the lead author (like “GMOs are a pesticide sponge”) to see that it was biased.
The result of all of this severely tainted work (and there’s plenty from the pro-GMO side too) is that the really good science in the field gets drowned out, and isn’t taken seriously because people just assume that it, too, must be biased. Total mess.
PS : further explanation from TL posters :
+ Show Spoiler +
AUGcodon
This is probably the most relevant graph for discussion
Mortality graph
Fig. 1. Mortality of rats fed GMO treated or not with Roundup, and effects of Roundup alone. Rats were fed with NK603 GM maize (with or without application of Roundup) at three different doses (11, 22, 33% in their diet: thin, medium and bold lines, respectively) compared to the substantially equivalent closest isogenic non-GM maize (control,
dotted line). Roundup was administrated in drinking water at 3 increasing doses, same symbols (environmental (A), MRL in agricultural GMOs (B) and half of minimal agricultural levels (C), see Section 2). Lifespan during the experiment for the control group is represented by the vertical bar ± SEM (grey area). In bar histograms, the causes of
mortality before the grey area are detailed in comparison to the controls (0). In black are represented the necessary euthanasia because of suffering in accordance with ethical
rules (tumors over 25% body weight, more than 25% weight loss, hemorrhagic bleeding, etc.); and in hatched areas, spontaneous mortality.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9wIjx.png)
Cancer graph
Legend:Fig. 2. Largest non-regressive tumors in rats fed GMO treated or not by Roundup, and effects of Roundup alone. The symbols of curves and treatments are explained in the caption of Fig. 1. The largest tumors were palpable during the experiment and numbered from 20 mm in diameter for males and 17.5 mm for females. Above this size, 95% of
growths were non-regressive tumors. Summary of all tumors are shown in the bar histograms: black, non regressive largest tumors; white, small internal tumors; grey,metastases.
Direct link to the graph
GMO represent just the the crop, GMO + R is the crop and pesticide, and R is just the pesticide. This graph basically tells you how fast rats develop the tumor. The dotted line represent the rats who do not eat GMO. The continuous line represent the rats that are fed by the GMO. the thinnest line is when their diet consist 11% of the GMO, the medium bolded line is 22%, and really bolded line is 33%.
So, when you look at females, you see those fed in GMO develop tumors much faster than themselves. the effect is less dramatic in males.
This is probably the most relevant graph for discussion
Mortality graph
Fig. 1. Mortality of rats fed GMO treated or not with Roundup, and effects of Roundup alone. Rats were fed with NK603 GM maize (with or without application of Roundup) at three different doses (11, 22, 33% in their diet: thin, medium and bold lines, respectively) compared to the substantially equivalent closest isogenic non-GM maize (control,
dotted line). Roundup was administrated in drinking water at 3 increasing doses, same symbols (environmental (A), MRL in agricultural GMOs (B) and half of minimal agricultural levels (C), see Section 2). Lifespan during the experiment for the control group is represented by the vertical bar ± SEM (grey area). In bar histograms, the causes of
mortality before the grey area are detailed in comparison to the controls (0). In black are represented the necessary euthanasia because of suffering in accordance with ethical
rules (tumors over 25% body weight, more than 25% weight loss, hemorrhagic bleeding, etc.); and in hatched areas, spontaneous mortality.
Cancer graph
Legend:Fig. 2. Largest non-regressive tumors in rats fed GMO treated or not by Roundup, and effects of Roundup alone. The symbols of curves and treatments are explained in the caption of Fig. 1. The largest tumors were palpable during the experiment and numbered from 20 mm in diameter for males and 17.5 mm for females. Above this size, 95% of
growths were non-regressive tumors. Summary of all tumors are shown in the bar histograms: black, non regressive largest tumors; white, small internal tumors; grey,metastases.
Direct link to the graph
GMO represent just the the crop, GMO + R is the crop and pesticide, and R is just the pesticide. This graph basically tells you how fast rats develop the tumor. The dotted line represent the rats who do not eat GMO. The continuous line represent the rats that are fed by the GMO. the thinnest line is when their diet consist 11% of the GMO, the medium bolded line is 22%, and really bolded line is 33%.
So, when you look at females, you see those fed in GMO develop tumors much faster than themselves. the effect is less dramatic in males.
+ Show Spoiler +
On September 19 2012 22:41 Heh_ wrote:
Okay, so I read the whole paper, courtesy of AUGcodon (start, if you know what I mean). I'll present my interpretation of the paper as unbiased as I can possibly get:
Figures:
Figure 1:
They looked at the lifespan of the mice and the causes of death. It’s pretty similar across the board. The authors nitpicked at a few cases where the Roundup-treated mice developed some problems relative to control, but it’s not noteworthy at all. When you’re looking at populations, 1 or 2 outliers hardly matter; the overall trend matters more. Problem is that their population size is hilariously small (10). Females got more mammary tumors… no shit Sherlock.
Figure 2:
They looked at tumor sizes. The females had tumors that were big.. really big that it caused obvious problems. Untreated controls appear to have smaller tumors, but by a small margin except for 1 group. No statistics done though.. no way to get anything with such a small sample size so we don’t even know if that difference is statistically significant.
Figure 3:
Gross pictures of tumors, tumors everywhere. While they claim that this is the trend observed, it could also have been a deliberate selection of pictures in order to justify the trend they want to observe. They did do some quantification in Table 2 and it does indeed seem like the Roundup-treated rats have more tumors though. More elaboration below.
Figure 4:
A pretty useless picture, trying to show how bad the cancer can get. It really contributes nothing to the rest of the article, no point commenting more.
Figure 5:
They claim to show that the physiological parameters are similar between groups. Why do I use the phrase “claim to”? Because their graphs make totally no sense. They don’t show which groups are getting compared, nor any biologically relevant numbers, just some really weird coefficients. Figure 5B is a bigger offender; this time they look at individual parameters and can’t even label the Y axis in an easily-understood manner. All I can decipher is that controls are different from treated rats. The authors claimed that they were statistically significant, but I shall not go into a long tangent about statistical manipulation, because this figure reeks of that. Also, the first time I’m seeing error bars in this paper. Too bad it has no meaning at all..
Others:
Problems with methods:
The strain of rat used is particularly susceptible to mammary tumors, which is what the researchers found. One source is found here (http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/5/1037.abstract). They did find many other tumors, but again no statistics. I have a concern that they could have been biased when examining the rats (more observant for tumors in the strains that they want them to appear in), but let’s hope that they were unbiased, or at least took some steps to make the examination unbiased.
Problems with statistics:
Each group has only 10 animals (100 of each gender, divided into 10 groups). That’s way too little for statistical analysis. You need a lot more to establish any statistical significance from the results. Anyway, from the graphs, there’s no significance at all.
In conclusion:
Basically, the paper states that the survival of the treated and control rats are similar, although the treated rats have a non-statistically significant increased tumor incidence. The biggest flaw of this paper is really the number of rats per group; 10 is wayyy to little. 50 would be good, 100 would make for convincing statistics. The last figure was really digging deep for something to comment on, but it’s really a waste of space. All in all, they made a point, but they did not prove it beyond reasonable doubt.
Unrelated:
You’re not supposed to house rats in cages alone. They’re supposed to be socially housed, according to IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee) guidelines.
Okay, so I read the whole paper, courtesy of AUGcodon (start, if you know what I mean). I'll present my interpretation of the paper as unbiased as I can possibly get:
Figures:
Figure 1:
They looked at the lifespan of the mice and the causes of death. It’s pretty similar across the board. The authors nitpicked at a few cases where the Roundup-treated mice developed some problems relative to control, but it’s not noteworthy at all. When you’re looking at populations, 1 or 2 outliers hardly matter; the overall trend matters more. Problem is that their population size is hilariously small (10). Females got more mammary tumors… no shit Sherlock.
Figure 2:
They looked at tumor sizes. The females had tumors that were big.. really big that it caused obvious problems. Untreated controls appear to have smaller tumors, but by a small margin except for 1 group. No statistics done though.. no way to get anything with such a small sample size so we don’t even know if that difference is statistically significant.
Figure 3:
Gross pictures of tumors, tumors everywhere. While they claim that this is the trend observed, it could also have been a deliberate selection of pictures in order to justify the trend they want to observe. They did do some quantification in Table 2 and it does indeed seem like the Roundup-treated rats have more tumors though. More elaboration below.
Figure 4:
A pretty useless picture, trying to show how bad the cancer can get. It really contributes nothing to the rest of the article, no point commenting more.
Figure 5:
They claim to show that the physiological parameters are similar between groups. Why do I use the phrase “claim to”? Because their graphs make totally no sense. They don’t show which groups are getting compared, nor any biologically relevant numbers, just some really weird coefficients. Figure 5B is a bigger offender; this time they look at individual parameters and can’t even label the Y axis in an easily-understood manner. All I can decipher is that controls are different from treated rats. The authors claimed that they were statistically significant, but I shall not go into a long tangent about statistical manipulation, because this figure reeks of that. Also, the first time I’m seeing error bars in this paper. Too bad it has no meaning at all..
Others:
Problems with methods:
The strain of rat used is particularly susceptible to mammary tumors, which is what the researchers found. One source is found here (http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/5/1037.abstract). They did find many other tumors, but again no statistics. I have a concern that they could have been biased when examining the rats (more observant for tumors in the strains that they want them to appear in), but let’s hope that they were unbiased, or at least took some steps to make the examination unbiased.
Problems with statistics:
Each group has only 10 animals (100 of each gender, divided into 10 groups). That’s way too little for statistical analysis. You need a lot more to establish any statistical significance from the results. Anyway, from the graphs, there’s no significance at all.
In conclusion:
Basically, the paper states that the survival of the treated and control rats are similar, although the treated rats have a non-statistically significant increased tumor incidence. The biggest flaw of this paper is really the number of rats per group; 10 is wayyy to little. 50 would be good, 100 would make for convincing statistics. The last figure was really digging deep for something to comment on, but it’s really a waste of space. All in all, they made a point, but they did not prove it beyond reasonable doubt.
Unrelated:
You’re not supposed to house rats in cages alone. They’re supposed to be socially housed, according to IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee) guidelines.
